82 19 CE SIN
ARCHIVE STORIES FROM THE FIRST YEAR OF OVERLANDER 4X4
Child of the Revolution
Forty years ago this month, Land Rover brought the assembled motoring press together for the launch of an all-new vehicle. It looked similar to a Series IIII but drove more like a Range Rover… so, in the last of a series of articles adapted from 4x4 magazine’s first year in existence, what did our fearless roving reporter Brian Hartley make of Solihull’s revolutionary new vehicle? A cold, bright February afternoon in the Warwickshire countryside around Stratford-upon-Avon. All was well with the world as I swung my Range Rover into the long drive that wound its way through spacious grounds to the Welcombe Hotel. We had been invited to the press launch of the Land Rover One Ten, a beanfeast I had been looking forward to for weeks and one which would surely vindicate my earlier ideas as to the shape of things to come from Solihull. The hotel is a huge, imposing place, fitting my expansive mood
42 | FEBRUARY 2023
AWAITING 2 PICS 6pp 110 launch.indd 42
of carefree affluence to a tee. I had just decided that this has to be THE way to enjoy yourself when I saw it. Just peeking its plastic nose round the corner of a shadowed archway was a Land Rover shaped object. The flared wheelarch wasn’t familiar, though and neither was that plastic grin across its amiable snout. Feeling like a schoolboy playing truant, I nonchalantly strolled under the arch. The grille badge boldly proclaimed, as it came into focus, LAND ROVER 110. To use an eloquent if somewhat earthy expression, I was totally gobstruck.
4x4 15/01/2023 13:06
